


Re-settling

by waterbird13



Series: Tumblr Fics [79]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Daemons, Gen, PTSD, Trauma, daemon AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-23
Updated: 2016-07-23
Packaged: 2018-07-26 07:11:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7564933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waterbird13/pseuds/waterbird13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky Barnes daemon was a dog. And then, since HYDRA, she's unsettled. Shifting constantly, Bucky worries they'll never have a form again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Re-settling

**Author's Note:**

> This is another fic from Tumblr.
> 
> Warnings for: daemon AU, mentions of trauma and PTSD associated with Bucky's time at HYDRA.

When Bucky settled as a teenager, his daemon became a big mutt of a dog, with keen eyes and big paws that helped her move fast when she needed to.

Overall, Bronwyn isn’t anything too impressive, nothing flashy, nothing that makes people look, and Bucky’s just fine with that. She’s good in the war, too, able to keep herself still and low at Bucky’s side, her keen senses aiding his.

He’s not sure who he forgets first. Steve, or her.

But he does. He forgets Bronwyn, and although she can never leave his side, Bucky stops responding to her as anything more relevant than his shadow.

When he first runs into Steve again, Steve calls his name and seconds later tries appealing to Bronwyn who, at the time, is in the form of a lioness. Neither of them respond, but Steve’s anguished look is enough.

When Steve drags him back in, Bucky’s getting his memories back, even if they’re slow coming and feels like he’s reading a book about someone else or something. He knows who Bronwyn is. He knows she used to be a dog, that she’d settled when he was twelve and never wavered until the day HYDRA started messing with his mind.

He knows other things too, like that’s Steve, his best friend, the man he followed into war zones without hesitation. And that’s Sarea, and she’s been a wolf since Steve was thirteen, the biggest sign that whatever was inside him was too big for his sickly little body. Sarea looks at Bronwyn like she’s diseased.

Bronwyn won’t settle. Bucky assumed it was because he had no mind to speak of, so there was no personality, no inert traits for Bronwyn to latch onto, but she still won’t settle back into her form. One day she’s a snake, the next a big cat, the third a tiny little mouse, hiding in Bucky’s pockets. Sometimes she shifts moment to moment, the others watching with barely concealed disgust.

He’s a grown man. It’s not natural for this to happen. Children shift. Adults have forms. Adults have developed, have personalities, and only the strongest personal changes could cause some sort of shift.

Bucky and Bronwyn, in short, are broken.

“I wish you’d just be a fucking dog again,” he tells her.

She looks at him sadly, little mouse eyes big. “What if I’m not?” She asks quietly. “What if that’s not who we are anymore?”

“Then who the fuck are we?”

She can’t answer him, apparently.

The therapist they’re insisting he sees seems to think they’ll settle eventually, although Bronwyn might be right, and her form might change. Bucky thinks of some of the forms she’s taken with trepidation. The killers of every variety, big and muscly and out for blood, or sleek and poisonous, the ones that kill you before you even know it happened. He thinks of the shy little mouse who can’t face the world.

They’re all perfectly serviceable forms, of course. Anyone else might be proud to have their daemon settle like that. But Bucky blanches when he thinks what they’ve meant to them.

Bronwyn turns into a butterfly the day he’s officially allowed to join the Avengers. Useless on the battlefield, showy and an eye-catching sight on Bucky’s shoulder, but she’s there.

“Is that…” Steve asks carefully.

“No,” Bucky says shortly. He’s pretty sure. Even if the major reason why is he’s unconvinced anything will cause Bronwyn to settle anymore.

“Butterflies are for rebirth,” Natasha says sagely. Her own daemon is never in sight, at least not in public, but Bucky’s pretty sure he sees eyes poking out from a pouch on her belt, getting an eyeful of him and Bronwyn.

Bucky laughs humorlessly. “Great.”

It takes three and a half years after he escapes HYDRA for Bronwyn to settle. In that time, he’s gained his memories back–almost all of them, he’s pretty sure, even if some of them are distant or fuzzy. They’ve gained a team and a home.

He sleeps with a gun in his bedside drawer, but it’s better than under the pillow, like he used to. He lets Tony touch his arm and maintain it, and he lets at least Steve close on his bad days. He learns modern culture, mostly music and memes and bad jokes, from Clint and Sam.

There’s nothing that points to this happening, but then again, most children do not report having any sort of defining moment that makes their daemon pick a form. He just wakes up one morning, and Bronwyn is a dog once more.

She’s the same loveable mutt, even if her eyes are a bit harder and her body scarred. Her front paw is missing. She’s not so eager to approach others.

But she’s got three of the same oversize paws and her tongue still hangs out of her mouth when they’re both happy. Her tail wags just like it used to, even if it does it less often.

Bucky rests a hand on her head. “For real?”

“I think so,” she says.

And really, that’s good enough for Bucky. They’re back. Different, sure. But back.


End file.
